National Poetry Month, Literary Pranks, and More

by
Melissa Faliveno
4.1.13

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:

Today kicks off National Poetry Month, inaugurated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, which offers thirty ways to celebrate poetry this month. 

Also in honor of National Poetry Month, the editors of Found Poetry Review have launched Pulitzer Remix, a project in which eighty-five poets are asked to create one found poem—taken from eighty-five Pultizer Prize-winning works of fiction—each day this month.

Camp NaNoWriMo—an initiative based on November’s National Novel Writing Month that provides online support, tracking tools, and deadlines to help writers finish a novel draft in a month—also kicks off today. GalleyCat offers ninety tips and tools to help participating writers get started.   

Flavorwire’s Emily Temple rounds up ten new must-read books published this month.

Publishers Weekly has given the twentieth-annual Bookstore of the Year award to Square Books, the Oxford, Mississippi–based bookshop that Grove Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin calls "one of the greatest bookstores in America." (Check out Poets & Writers Magazine contributing editor Jeremiah Chamberlin's interview with Square Books owner Richard Howarth in the inaugural installment of Inside Indie Bookstores.)

Tin House editor Rob Spillman weighs in on Amazon’s recent purchase of Goodreads. (Salon)

In an attempt to debunk the theories of so-called “Bard Deniers,” a group of seven Shakespeare scholars have united to write a book aiming to prove that the Bard did in fact write his own plays. (The Guardian

Today is April Fool’s Day, and while the posts above all link to true stories, Brooklyn, New York–based publisher Melville House rounds up seven pranks and tricks from classic literature